Avakas Gorge: the trail is closed, and most guides have not caught up

The Avakas Gorge nature trail is flagged as temporarily closed on Cyprus’s official tourism site, and has been reported closed since 6 December 2025. Check the status before you drive out there. Almost every guide, review page and map listing near the top of Google still describes it as an open, free, walk-in-any-time attraction. At the time of writing, the Deputy Ministry of Tourism does not.

This matters more than a normal “check ahead” caveat, because the gap between the official position and the popular one is unusually wide. Google’s own AI summary for the gorge states that it is free to access and open 24 hours. The Deputy Ministry of Tourism’s trail page is literally titled “Temporarily closed”. Both were live on the same day.

So this page does two things: it tells you how to establish the real status yourself on the day you are travelling, and it gives you the Akamas walks that are currently open instead. For the wider area, our Akamas Peninsula guide covers the coast, the tracks and the 4x4 question.

Avakas Gorge at a glance

What you want to know	The current position
Status	Listed as “Temporarily closed” on the official Visit Cyprus trail page, updated 18 August 2026
Closed since	6 December 2025, per forestry department statements reported in Cyprus media
Reason	Increased water flow, slippery ground, falling rocks and landslides
Reopening date	None announced. An update is promised when the gorge is judged safe
At the entrance	Warning signs and a chain
If you go anyway	The forestry department has said it bears no responsibility for any incident
Where it is	Pegeia state forest, western Akamas, Pafos district
Official trail length	1.2km, linear, difficulty 1 to 2, about 45 minutes
Getting there	Agios Georgios Pegeias to Toxeftra road for about 2.5km, ending on an unsurfaced track

Why the trail is closed

The hazards are the same ones that make the gorge worth seeing. It is a narrow canyon cut by the Avgas river, with limestone walls rising tens of metres and a floor that is partly the streambed itself. Water flow, wet rock and rockfall are not incidental risks there; they are the mechanism that built the place.

The reported reasons for this closure are increased water flow, slippery ground, and the risk of falling rocks and soil. The forestry department has placed warning signs and a chain at the entrance, and has been unusually blunt in public about people stepping around them: visitors who ignore the closure do so at their own risk, and the department accepts no responsibility for what happens to them.

That is worth taking at face value. Cyprus media have reported hikers being rescued from the gorge, and separate incidents of tourists injured there in 2024. It is a short walk, which is exactly why people underestimate it.

Why so much of the internet says it is open

Three reasons, and knowing them tells you which sources to trust in future.

Review and mapping platforms inherit stale data. A Tripadvisor attraction page or a Google place listing does not have a field for “the forestry department closed this in December”. AllTrails has updated one of its Avakas routes to carry a “[CLOSED]” label, but its other listing for the same gorge does not.

Tour and hotel content has an incentive to stay evergreen. Booking platforms still sell Akamas day trips that name the gorge, and hotel blogs describing the walk were written years ago and never revisited.

AI summaries synthesise the popular consensus, not the official one. The AI Overview for this search draws on hobby blogs and review sites, and confidently reports opening hours the trail does not have.

None of these are lying. They are just describing a normal year, and this is not one.

How to check the status yourself

Do this on the morning you plan to go, not the week before. Closures here get lifted with little fanfare, and the historical pattern is months of closure followed by a quiet reopening: the trail was shut in December 2021 and reopened in April 2022, then shut in December 2023 and reopened in March 2024.

In order of authority:

1. The official trail page on visitcyprus.com. It carries “(Temporarily closed)” in the title when the closure is in force. It is the single quickest check and it is maintained.
2. Current Cyprus news. Reopenings are reported locally. A search for the gorge by name, sorted by date, will surface a reopening within a day or two of it happening.
3. What is physically at the trailhead. A chain and signs mean closed, whatever your phone says. This is the source that overrules the others.

If you are relying on a tour operator to have checked for you, ask them directly and get a specific answer about the gorge rather than the itinerary as a whole.

What you are missing, honestly described

It is a short walk, not an expedition. The official description gives the linear trail as 1.2km, graded 1 to 2 for difficulty, at about 45 minutes, starting from around 47m of altitude and barely climbing. The distances of 3km, 7.1km and 8.2km quoted elsewhere are round trips or longer loops into the wider Pegeia forest.

What makes it exceptional is the last section, where the walls close in and the route follows the streambed through a shaded, damp, green corridor that feels nothing like the rest of the Akamas. Visit Cyprus lists lentisk, Phoenician juniper, terebinth, oleander and storax along the way, plus the endemic and endangered Centaurea akamantis, which grows on the gorge walls and effectively nowhere else. Foxes, hares, hedgehogs and three endemic birds, the Cyprus wheatear, Cyprus warbler and scops owl, are on the official species list.

That is a genuinely good 45 minutes. It is not worth a rockfall.

Akamas walks that are open instead

Avakas is the only trail of the 34 on the official Visit Cyprus nature trails index currently carrying a closure flag, so the alternatives below are open as far as the official listing goes. Both of the walking options are a real step up in effort from Avakas.

Instead of Avakas	What it is	Why it works
Aphrodite trail (circular)	7.5km, grade 3, 3 to 4 hours, from the Baths of Aphrodite	Climbs to 333m for views over Cape Arnaoutis and Polis Chrysochous, passes medieval tower ruins and a 500-year-old oak
Adonis trail (circular)	7.5km, grade 3, 3 to 4 hours, starting 400m before the Baths	Same trailhead area, quieter, crosses the Aphrodite route
The Blue Lagoon by boat	Half or full day from Latchi	No trail conditions to worry about; see our Blue Lagoon guide
Lara Bay and the west coast by 4x4	Full day	The wild-Akamas experience without a gorge floor under you
Coral Bay and the Agios Georgios headland	Half day	Easy, no off-road driving; see the Coral Bay guide

Both nature trails start at or beside the Baths of Aphrodite, which makes the logistics simple: one car park, a choice of two routes, and a site worth ten minutes on its own. Neither has reliable drinking water, and grade 3 in the Cyprus system is a real walk in the heat, so treat an afternoon start in summer as a bad idea.

If your plan was the gorge specifically because you wanted a short, shaded, low-effort walk, the closest substitute is not another trail at all. It is a boat day from Latchi, which our Latchi guide and Paphos boat trips guide both cover.

If you are tempted to go anyway

Two practical points, without a lecture.

The first is the responsibility question. The forestry department has stated publicly that it is not responsible for people who pass the chain. That is not only a moral position; it is the sort of statement that matters if you need to make a claim afterwards. Entering a site that authorities have formally closed is the kind of thing travel policies exclude, and it is worth reading yours before deciding. Our Cyprus travel insurance guide covers what these policies typically do and do not cover.

The second is the terrain. The approach ends on an unsurfaced track, so a standard hire car is already marginal out there before you have walked anywhere. If your Akamas plans involve tracks at all, read our Cyprus car hire guide on what rental agreements actually permit, because most exclude unsurfaced roads entirely.

The short answer

The gorge is closed, the official source says so plainly, and much of the first page of Google has not noticed. Check the Visit Cyprus trail page on the morning you plan to travel. If it has reopened, it is a superb 45 minutes and the best short walk in the Pafos district. If it has not, take the Aphrodite trail from the Baths, or put the day into the water instead and go to the Blue Lagoon. For everything else in the area, start with our Paphos things to do guide.